for friends of the acer aspire one
May 15, 2009
Acer Aspire One 571
Another Aspire One, but this one is quite a bit different.

Not so much on the outside, as the chassis is apparently based on the D150. It also shares the same internal specifications, but has some additional components. The screen size is 10.1" still, but the resolution was increased to 1280x720 with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Intel Atom N280 however cannot reliably decode H.264 or HD video in general at that resolution, that's why it's supported by the Quartics QV1721 Multimedia Coprocessor. It does accelerate decoding and encoding(!) of H.264 and other codecs, and also adds hardware scaling and filtering. You can find detailed information about it here.

Another addition is quite unusual. Acer added an optical disc drive, but not a regular one like ASUS did with the EEE 1004DN. Instead they opted for Vmedia, which are basically tiny Blu-Ray discs, protected in a plastic cartridge, with a diameter of only 32mm (Blu-Ray: 120mm) and a capacity of up to 2GB. More information is available here. If you don't notice the loading mechanism for the discs: it's on the left, indicated by the Vmedia logo.

It certainly is an interesting new entry in their netbook line, but the marketing name was probably not chosen wisely. It can easily be confused with the 751, which is a completely different machine.


18



Anonymous
Ha!!! another UMD like fiasco....
May 15, 2009 3:52:00 PM



Anonymous
i love it!!! apart from the Vmedia disc... what good is something like that for... honestly, can you install software from it, can you play movies from it(without paying an arm and a leg), can you get disks for a resonable price? NO!!!
May 15, 2009 4:45:00 PM



Cas
Jesus F Christ, who is coming up with such ideas?? A new proprietary read-only disc format in 2009... No thanks.

What I would like to see is a netbook with 1280x720 resolution and a modern chipset like the NVidia ION. The coprocessor approach doesn't work either, because the popular video players like VLC or MPlayer will probably never support well a non-mainstream chip like this one.
May 15, 2009 5:09:00 PM



Anonymous
Great to get 720p and H.264 HW assist, but WTF? Vmedia? I'd MUCH rather have an ExpressCard slot.
May 15, 2009 7:27:00 PM



Does it use double-sided double-density floppies, too? It should have had a slot for toast - that'd make more sense. Still, glad it's an Acer Aspire One - as I've already got one, I don't need to upgrade.
May 15, 2009 7:35:00 PM



Anonymous
I for one welcome the option of a minidisc on a netbook, even if it's proprietary it's better than nothing, though I'd rather a mini-DVD burner since the majority of other DVD burners can read and write the disc too, and since the media is bound to cost less and also stores more than 1.0GB.
May 15, 2009 7:48:00 PM



I was looking to buy a new laptop..this suits me well
May 16, 2009 6:59:00 AM



Incidentally, macles*, are you considering covering the forthcoming Acer Aspire Revo units in this blog, too? They look very interesting.
May 16, 2009 9:54:00 AM



Paul
Any word on when tehy are comoing out with teh ION chip? Mini DVD = FAIL
May 17, 2009 8:39:00 AM



hmm I wonder if the screen can be taken and install in a different acer netbook or better the asus 1000he, now that would be nice. As for the HD decoder all netbooks could have this feature if they want to sacrifice the internal mini pci wi-fi card with that decoder.
May 18, 2009 5:48:00 AM



Anonymous
Well, the machine looks pretty nice, especially the screen, but why the mini DVD drive? Completely worthless, I'd rather just use the SD card reader; 1GB cards sell for $5 now, and will probably just get cheaper in the future, if you can still find ones that small. Don't want the DVD drive.
May 18, 2009 6:04:00 AM



Without this blog I would hate my Aspire One because I wouldn't have the knowledge on how to make it work for me the way I need it to. Thanks for doing what you do!!!
May 18, 2009 6:05:00 AM



Anonymous
раскрутка нового бренда - дело посредственное. А самое главное новшество - вот эти самые диски, которые и продвигают. Нафиг они там нужны. Лучше бы уж под мини-двд все сделали.
May 18, 2009 3:46:00 PM



Anonymous
Folks, calm down. It won't be a fiasco. From what I have learned the QV1721 chip will continue to support more & more codecs and players. It is software upgradable which means you won't have to purchase new hardware.
I am looking forward to watching Internet videos in HD and enhanced YouTube videos.
Other features you are asking will come. I am sure.
May 19, 2009 7:48:00 PM



Anonymous
The problem with an ION chip is that with the gain in performance you take a serious hit in power utilization. At least for video (encode, decode, transcode) passing off these tasks to a co-processor (assuming the quartics specs are accurate) makes sense. Especially for a netbook where power management is very important.
May 20, 2009 6:23:00 PM



Anonymous
I think this thing looks SWWEEEEET! I didn't see any mention of a price range sort of thing though.
May 21, 2009 5:09:00 AM



Anonymous
It has fiasco written all over it. I will go buy a toaster instead. Money better spent!
May 27, 2009 2:11:00 AM



Anonymous
Why would you need an extra chip to watch youtube videos? My 2 cents: it will fail big time. I'll not pay extra bucks to watch youtube.
May 27, 2009 4:18:00 AM